Issue Archives

The law fails to accommodate the inconvenient fact that an individual’s identifiable genetic information is involuntarily and immutably shared with her close genetic relatives. Legal institutions have established that individuals have a cognizable interest in control­ling genetic information that is identifying to them. The Supreme Court recognized in Maryland v. King that the Fourth Amendment is impli­cated when arrestees’ DNA is analyzed,...

This Essay attempts to describe what is distinctive about the way the protection of individual rights in the areas of national security and foreign affairs has been occurring in recent decades. Historically, the right to protection under the U.S. Constitution and courts has been sharply limited by categorical distinctions based on geography, war, and, to some extent, citizenship. These categorical rules carved out domains where the courts and Constitution...

Scholars and activists have long been interested in conscientious law-breaking as a means of dissent. The civil disobedient violates the law in a bid to highlight its illegitimacy and motivate reform. A less heralded form of social action, however, involves nearly the opposite approach. As a wide range of examples attest, dissenters may also seek to disrupt legal regimes through hyperbolic, literalistic, or otherwise unanticipated adherence to...

Data on school discipline reveals significant numbers of students are being suspended and expelled from public schools for a variety of low-level offenses, the so-called school-to-prison pipeline. Additionally, troubling disparities have emerged: Students with disabilities, poor students, and nonwhite students are removed from school at greater rates, and for less significant actions, than are white students. Due process requires a short, informal...

In 2011, the federal district courts began a pilot program to record and post full-length videos from selected civil proceedings. The program was deliberately structured to preserve the quality and integrity of ongoing adjudication. Three-and-a-half years in, the program has re­vealed an equally important, and unanticipated, benefit: improving the quality and integrity of future adjudication. This Essay describes this second benefit...

  In January 2015, the Supreme Court directed the parties to brief and argue an additional question in Johnson v. United States: “Whether the residual clause in the Armed Career Criminal Act of 1984, 18 U.S.C. § 924(e)(2)(B)(ii), is unconstitutionally vague.” The order represents an unusual move because the defendant had not raised the vagueness issue […]

Introduction In March 2015, the New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS) entered into a consent order with a major German bank (with New York affiliate branches), Commerzbank AG, regarding that bank’s violations of state and federal anti-money-laundering (AML) laws. And Commerzbank has now paid $1.45 billion to the U.S. government to set­tle the […]